[mrmistoffelees]

Originally Posted by Pierre

Not going to happen.

Because….?

---------- Post added at 22:13 ---------- Previous post was at 22:10 ----------

Originally Posted by nffc

It is feasible that there could be a variant which not only erodes vaccine or infection acquired immunity equal or more than the current ones; it is also feasible that there could be a variant which produces more severe disease than the omicron lineage (which most experts do now seem to agree is milder despite Whitty initially saying it probably wasn't - when in reality what he was actually saying is that there wasn't enough evidence).



It is possible some or all of both will occur at the same time.


If let's say that the vaccine escape in BA5 makes it infect 100x as many people as let's say Delta, but that the infection was let's say 100x less serious (if you could measure that way), You'd still end up with a roughly similar number in hospital.



But even in that situation you wouldn't be "starting again" because for that to happen absolutely nothing we had against covid would work. Vaccines wouldn't stop people getting hospitalised, we'd see the admissions to tests go up again, we'd see hospitals not be able to treat them as the anti-virals don't work. But on that point I don't think they actually invented any new anti-virals for covid, just tested how to make the existing ones effective. They'd also know how to keep people apart and stop infections spreading more.


There may well be something in the future which does this but it's all hyperbole to predict how the pandemic is going to run or transition to be endemic. Whether this is due to evolution of the virus or that more people simply have some immunity to the virus either through infection or vaccination, the course of the disease in those who do get it is, at the moment, milder, and this has generally been the case, Delta was milder than Alpha in a lot of people, but just got more people. Whether the disease will generally progress to a cold type illness in pretty much everyone, or whether it will at some point throw out a variant which does have more severe effects, remains to be seen and won't be seen until it happens.



And if it does there would probably be some sort of booster roll out to the more vulnerable, maybe some more encouragement to WFH, maybe return of more free testing availability and isolating people who have the virus, What probably won't happen as much is more general-facing measures on people who aren't ill, such as covid passes (pointless if vaccinated and previously infected can get and spread it anyway), mask wearing in the general population, closure of businesses, stay home orders etc, which generally do cause more damage than they solve and probably do little to actually stop the virus anyway.


So I can't really think of any situation where the virus would put us "back to the start" or indeed where we'd get that sort of response from the politicians at all. It wouldn't be an appropriate solution really.

The fact you can’t think of a situation doesn’t meant it cannot or won’t occur.

I’ll bet you a pound to a penny three and half years ago you couldn’t or didn’t think about covid and the destruction it would wreak